


cardigan

by k1kth



Category: Marvel's Avengers (Video Game), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Marvel's Avengers Spoilers, Pining, Temporary Character Death, spoilers for the game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26303782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/k1kth/pseuds/k1kth
Summary: Best friends don't take the other's clothes when they've passed as a grieving mechanism.Luckily, the others don't ask when Tony is the only one to stake a claim on one of Steve's things.inspired by cardigan by taylor swift[MARVEL'S AVENGERS SPOILERS]
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 11
Kudos: 150





	cardigan

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written for stevetony in a WHILE so sorry if it's mediocre but I just couldn't get this idea out of my head. At the time that I'm writing this, the game hasn't even been out for a full 48 hours yet and there's only been a handful of gameplay so far. As it had literally just come out, not a lot of background info have been released so there's not a solid timeline yet so I'm taking a couple of liberties with it here and just going by dates that I made up for the sake of this oneshot. Also in terms of characterization, considering there is a lack of background on the Avengers and each of their relationships pre-game, I have also taken some liberties in grabbing tidbits from other verses to put in here :) 
> 
> This is unbeta-d and all mistakes are mine (I wrote this at 4 am, forgive me)

**8 days — after**

They waste no time in putting them all on trial. 

There’s no time to think, no time to make excuses for what they all witnessed just a week ago. What’s left of San Francisco is gray and dry, shadows of the mistakes Tony admits was fully his fault. He doesn’t admit this to anyone, Bruce least of all, so he keeps it close to his chest as he parades around journalists with the fake smile he’s put on for decades as he heads inside the courtroom for the first of what is about to be a months long criminal trial. 

SHIELD is there, of course, Nick and Maria at the front; Bruce, Thor, and Nat as well, sitting in the first pew in their professional clothing. Tony takes a seat next to Nat and doesn’t speak. 

The courtroom fills up with newscasters and random spectators alike and among them are the scatters of what will eventually be left of SHIELD. There’s whispers and jeers and Tony knows what they say— what they’re all saying.

He knows they call him a murderer, that it’s his fault that Cap’s dead, that so many others are at the bottom of the bay with him. He hears what they say about the others too, but they’re not as harsh as his.

Natasha takes his hand and squeezes and he knows why it feels like a goodbye.

“We’ll get through this,” she whispers to him. 

Tony’s known the Widow long enough to know her lies. 

“I know,” he whispers back. 

It’s one of the last things he’ll ever tell her. 

**28 days — after**

They’re mirror shards of what they used to be and Tony doesn’t know how to fix it. He’s a mechanic, he should know how to fix it, right? But psychology and engineering weren’t exactly the same thing. 

Avengers Tower is cold now. Barren. 

They sleep, and rise, and eat, but they never talk. Not anymore. They roam around each other in the halls and the common rooms like ghosts passing by with no more than a brief moment of eye contact before looking away. 

Where there used to be a family is now hollow gazes and cold bodies.

The silence is deafening and Tony tunes it out by taking his anger out on his suits.

He smashes them from dawn to dusk and screams his voice hoarse. JARVIS always tells him to stop but he never stops to listen. 

By day 40, his once gleaming workshop, full of pride and wonder, is full of metal scraps and broken lights. 

Tony leaves the floor with bruised limbs and bleeding bare feet on that last day.

**42 days — before**

“How’s the reactor looking?”

Tony squeaks as his head bangs against the metal. He curses to himself as he crawls out from under the metal base of the Terrigen reactor only to be faced with a smirking super soldier looking down on him.

“You couldn’t have bothered knocking first?” Tony grumbles, rubbing his forehead. 

Steve grins at him as he offers his hand to help the brunet up. “I tried. You didn’t hear me over your wailing.”

“My wai— I was singing!”

Steve clutches his stomach and laughs, the deepness of it reverberating in Tony’s chest. “Quite beautifully, too!”

Tony raises his arm to hit him with his wrench but Steve deflects it easily, used to his antics by now.

“Aren’t you supposed to be thinking of what you’re gonna put on display for the parade?” Tony asks once he’s given up on trying to place a bruise on Steve’s arm with his tools.

Steve walks over to the chaise lounge sitting on the other side of the workshop and plops himself quite nonchalantly on the cushions, raising his arm to rest upon its back as he continues to look at Tony. 

“I’ve already had that decided the minute we decided we were gonna have a museum.”

Tony scoffs half-heartedly. “Of course you have.”

“Besides—” Steve turns so he’s laying on the lounge now, blue eyes blinking towards the ceiling. “That frees up mindspace for training ideas.”

Tony groans as he rolls back under the reactor. “Haven’t you already broken my spirit enough? That last sparring session had me icing my shoulder for hours.”

“I like to keep you on your toes.”

“If you wanted me on my toes, you could’ve just asked me to do ballet. God knows Natasha would kill to see me in pointe shoes. She’d kill more just to make me do a pas de deux with her.”

Tony can feel Steve’s eyes on him. “You did ballet?”

“I thought I told you this already?”

“Uh, no. For someone who overshares, you did forget that particular detail.”

Tony shrugs, then forgets Steve can’t see him from under the metal. “Guess I’m just a bad friend.”

Steve shuffles around for a second and Tony knows this from the noises of cloth against cloth and the light tinkling of metals against each other. Steve doesn’t say anything and Tony opens his mouth to interrupt the sudden bout of silence that’s starting to settle in the room before there’s a small “clink!” of something against his ankle and he rolls out from under the reactor with a yelp. 

The small hollow metal ball rolls away as he stares at it in shock and whips his head towards the super soldier to yell at him.

“What was that for?!”

“You’re not a bad friend, stop that.”

Tony shuts up and brown eyes stay blinking at blue. 

“Uh, thanks?”

Steve rolls his eyes at him and he so hates that Steve’s surely picked up the habit from me after all these years. “I still don’t know how you’re not used to me saying that by now.”

“Hey, I never received affection as a child—” he’s interrupted by a magazine to the face and a snort of laughter as it falls into his lap.

“You are  _ so _ mean to me!”

The blond throws his legs over the edge of the lounge chair and rests his elbows on his knees as he gazes straight into Tony’s eyes.

“I think I got that pass when we became friends, didn’t I?” 

**94 days — after**

Bruce is the last to testify and it’s his words that cut a knife through the remains of Tony’s family. 

That final echo of the gavel is what wakes Tony up from his stupor and it’s the last thing he remembers before he’s shoved into the van with the other Avengers. They don’t talk, they don’t even look at each other.

All Tony knows is the numb in his body that he’s carried with him for the last three months and the simmering anger he feels at his teammate for betraying them.

For telling the truth that Tony himself cannot bring himself to say.

They’re hurried back to the Tower as a protest gathers outside to scream and hurl metaphorical knives at them. 

They’re told by Tony’s lawyer that they only have a week to clean house and collect their belongings before being taken to the last SHIELD base to stay in isolation. She tells Tony that his company is no more and that Tarleton and Monica have started a technological company called AIM and they promise to solve the inhuman crisis that they’ve left behind. She tells him that his building has been handed over to them. 

“I’m sorry,” she says to him before she leaves.

_ You shouldn’t be the one apologizing _ .

“I know,” is all he says back.

**100 days — after**

Tony goes through the motions of gathering the things he wants to keep and placing the things he doesn’t in storage boxes for SHIELD— or what’s left of it— to pick up. 

He’s through his fourth ‘keep’ box that Natasha, with a broken voice, brings up Steve’s belongings. 

They all freeze hovering over their respective boxes, heavy sighs leaving their heavy hearts.

“I’ll do it,” Tony says and Natasha nods at him in gratitude with red-rimmed eyes. 

The short walk to Steve’s room feels like forever. He feels as if his steps are too slow and as if the air around him had grown thick like molasses, making it difficult for him to move. He hears his own heartbeat as he wraps his hand around the door handle and pushes the door open, holding his breath.

He doesn’t know what to expect.

It hurts, seeing the traces of life left behind so suddenly. 

Though Steve kept his room militarily-clean, there were still signs of his existence around the place that reminded Tony that someone  _ lived _ in this room; there was the snake plant that sat on his desk that’s slowly withering to death, and the hamper of clean clothes sitting at the end of the bed just waiting to be tucked away in drawers. 

Even through the cleanliness, there was still the scent of  _ Steve _ lingering in the air— the smell of leather and musk and that specific brand of laundry detergent that he only used that made up his signature. It felt raw, and untouched, and Tony nearly breaks down at the doorway when he chokes on an inhale. 

He shuffles his way into the room, looking at every corner of it as if he wasn’t the one that designed it in the first place all those years ago.

Numbly, he goes through the movements of bringing boxes in and taking things out and he doesn’t stop to think. He packs, then labels them, then does it all over again until the room is barren.

Except for the shine of leather that winks at him from under the bed.

He reaches through stacks of boxes to reach it and pulls it back to lay it across his lap. There was a small layer of dust that had accumulated over it and he coughs as he brushes them away.

He stares at the piece of cloth as if it’s personally offended him and he doesn’t know why.

_ You should be here. Not your stupid jacket _ .

When they leave for the SHIELD base, almost every trace of Steve’s life is packed away in cardboard.

No one asks Tony about the jacket that he’s wearing. 

**136 days — after**

Tony is the first to leave the Chimera. 

The tension between the Avengers didn’t loosen and Tony was sick of walking on thin wires around his teammates. They were all still so angry and still grieving, still finding shadows at every corner of the decommissioned airship that it was hard to be anywhere outside of their rooms. 

And despite his anger and disappointment, Tony still loved his teammates enough to know he had to leave before he blew up on them.

He makes his way to the Utah-Nevada border where his ancestral home lies in ruins and decides to make a home for himself there. 

He has nothing for miles and only a memory to keep him company.

**295 days — after**

At the turn of spring, Tony hangs Steve’s jacket on his tiny closet door.

There’s an ache in his chest as he runs his hand over the leather, leaning his head against it as if he was resting it where flesh and blood should be, but there is nothing except for a fading scent and the hardness of the closet door.

It never stops hurting.

**352 days — after**

Tony spends his first birthday alone in years, drunk. 

He drives a good hour north to the nearest town to pick up some cheap beer and whiskey and is lucky enough that he isn’t questioned by anyone of his identity.

He figures the longer hair and the unkempt beard kept him undercover. 

He lights a bonfire with the copious amounts of wood lying around the broken manor and sits in front of it, staring at flames with unfocused eyes and a broken heart. 

He’s sweating underneath the leather but the alcohol keeps him from paying it any mind. 

“You should’ve been here celebrating with me,” he says to the flame, crackling into the night.

He takes a swig.

“You all should have.”

**343 days — before**

Tony knows Steve doesn’t really like when they make a big deal out of his birthday.

Steve says it’s because the whole country is already celebrating the Fourth of July as a national holiday so why should they extend the attention to him but the others all know it’s because Steve is too humble to admit that he doesn’t really like the attention. 

Though they all respect his wishes, they still find excuses to spoil him.

“Nat, can you please tell Thor that no, I do not want my own 80 foot statue on Asgard,” Steve sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

“It’d be a warrior’s honor, Steve,” Thor tells him with a cheeky grin.

Tony, leaning against the counter, smiles behind his coffee next to Bruce. 

Natasha chuckles, patting Steve on the back.

“I don’t know, Steve, that sounds like a really good deal to me.”

The super soldier groans and throws his head into his arms. “You can give Clint a statue, not me. I already see my face everywhere.”

“I mean, it’s a pretty face,” Tony butts in with a smirk and he gets a glare from Captain America himself for it. 

“I’m on  _ sneakers _ . Why would you put my face on  _ sneakers?” _

“The kids’ market is a confusing place, Cap. No one really knows,” Bruce says and it’s rare that the doctor smiles as easily as now. 

The air is light and humorous all throughout breakfast and Tony treasures it. They had no missions today, no meetings, and most importantly, no stuck-up Nick Fury stalking them. 

The Avengers lounge around lazily, quiet conversation between them all throughout the day and into the night. It’s the quietest birthday celebration they’ve had in a while and by the looks of it, Steve looks satisfied with the lack of extravagance. 

“Oh hey, fireworks are starting,” Natasha interrupts, standing up from her perch on the sofa. The others follow suit as they watch from inside the floor to ceiling living room windows the flashes of colorful light, popping then withering away. 

When Natasha disappears into the kitchen and comes back out with a cake packed with candles, Steve laughs but plays along happily as they all sing for him. 

“Thanks for this,” he says once all the candles are blown and slices are handed out.

With a grin, Tony throws his arm over the blond’s shoulder. “That’s what friends are for, Cap. We’re always here for you.”

**388 days — after**

He cries into the jacket when he realizes what day it is.

His body shakes with the strength of his breaths, knuckles white against the leather. He can’t bring himself to get up from the bed or do anything.

He lays there in silence once he’s run out of tears.

He’s alone as the faint sound of fireworks go off in the distance, but he shouldn’t be.

**735 days — after**

By the time two years have passed, Tony’s run out of tears.

He’s numb, going through the days in a haze. 

The jacket stays hung on the closet door for three seasons and around his shoulders for one. 

**1760 days — after**

Four years and 10 months after ~~Tony~~ the Avengers lost Steve, Bruce visits with a protege in tow and a heavy reminder of their failures. 

The girl— an inhuman named Kamala— gives Tony a drive and it’s the first thing in five years that gives Tony hope. 

He’s still mad at Bruce, but they have a lead— he could get his life back. 

~~_ The part of it that was attached to the jacket anyway. _ ~~

**1763 days — after**

Being back on the Chimera is weird. 

His room had stayed untouched all these years so there were still clothes and gadgets strewn everywhere but what surprised him most were the boxes of Steve’s stuff that he never managed to move into his room. Sitting in the corner collecting dust, Tony decides to take the time to clean them and move them into their rightful room.

While cleaning them out, Tony finds a worn, scrappy journal and with his curiosity getting the better of him, decides to read it.

It’s less of a journal and more of a sketchbook, really.

There’s doodles and quick sketches on every page and the occasional paragraph of thoughts being shared and it’s intrusive, the way Tony is seeing this side of Steve for the first time.

Towards the end of the entries, Tony takes note of the sole five pages just filled with sketches of  _ his _ face and something in him turns. 

He flips another page and ends up knowing that Steve realized he ~~loves~~ loved him for the first time when they were on that SHIELD-sanctioned mission to Washington.

He specifically knows that the moment Steve realized was when he retracted his helmet for a second during the fight and sneezed before making a joke and going back into the fray.

Tony laughs with unshed tears in his eyes.

He wants to ask why that moment exactly but he can’t. 

**1802 days — after**

“You still have that?”

Tony hums confused, looking up from his armor to look at Bruce.

“Have what?”

Bruce pokes the jacket he’s wearing. He knows its Steve’s.

“Of course. Why would I get rid of it?” Tony says, with a quirk of his brow.

Bruce opens his mouth to answer but shakes his head instead.

Things were better left unanswered.

**1894 days — after**

He’s alive.

Steve’s alive.

Tony’s hands shake as he unplugs the wires from the super soldier’s body, bare skin cold to the touch.

_ Please, let this be real. Please let him be real. _

“Tony?” 

Tony’s heart stutters as he laughs in disbelief. 

“You’re alive.”

**1901 days — after**

It’s odd seeing Steve roaming around the Chimera again after all these years. Tony keeps thinking he’s seeing a ghost but then he’ll see the other agents talking to him and it’s like a slap to the face, the way he remembers that Steve’s alive and has been for all these years.

He’s gonna have to ask Bruce if he’s allowed to take a swing at Monica next time he sees her. 

A week after bringing Steve back from space, he wanders into Tony’s room out of boredom while Tony’s brainstorming upgrades.

“This is a mess,” the blond says, looking at the clothes and gadgets lying haphazardly on the floor.

“Hey, you’re the one that decided to walk in here and bug me,” Tony retorts and it feels odd to be bantering with someone who he thought has been dead for half a decade. 

His eyebrows furrow when he sees the deepset frown on the soldier’s face. “Are you okay?”

Steve seems to startle from whatever he was thinking and meets Tony’s gaze with piercing blues. 

“I’m fine.”

Tony scoffs. “That definitely puts me at ease. Thanks for the clarification, Steven.”

Steve chokes on a reply when his eyes roam around the room and stop on a familiar article of clothing hanging from one of the closet doors.

“Is that my jacket?”

Steve has his back turned towards Tony so he can’t see the sudden flush of red that rushes to his face or the panic in his eyes.

“Uh, after you died, I wanted to honor you,” Tony manages to get out and he shuts his eyes in regret when he realizes it was the worst excuse he could come up with.

_ Try telling the dude you’ve also been in love with him for years, maybe that’ll make it easier. _

Steve pivots his head to look at him over his shoulder with a smirk.

“I was dead.”

“Hey, we all have different ways of grieving,” Tony says defensively. 

Steve stalks his way towards Tony’s desk where he’s sitting and presses his hands against the top, leaning against his arms to look down at the brunet. 

“So you decided to steal my jacket?”

“I  _ borrowed _ it. There’s a difference.”

The smirk stays on the blond’s face.

“Did anyone else  _ borrow _ any of my stuff?”

Tony stumbles over his words as he feels his face go warm. “Um. Uh, no it was just— ahem, it was just me.”

He squirms in his seat under Steve’s scrutiny. The smile on his face never goes away, but it softens into something more familiar.

“I don’t mind it, Tony,” he says finally.

His hand scoots closer to Tony’s on the table and Tony freezes, too afraid to move just in case he fucks it up.

“Why?” he asks.

There’s a moment when it feels like all time has frozen and not one sound passes between or around the two of them. Steve, in a sudden bout of bravery, sits halfway on the desk and takes Tony’s hand into his own, turning his palm over to lay it across his thigh loosely, tracing over the lines as nonchalantly as he was able.

Steve shrugs and it’s like five years hadn’t passed by them at all.

“You’re my favorite.”


End file.
